Ian wouldn’t suspect anything as I courted him. And I have the paperwork to prove it.”
“Well, that blows a hole in my objection,” I conceded.
I recapped what happened on the show that day to Alex over dinner at my house.
“So Ian doesn’t really care that he slept with his son?”
“Not really. He said he’s done worse.”
“How can you do worse than that?”
“Ian had twins as lovers once.”
“Ugh!”
“Fraternal. That’s why Ian said it didn’t bother him.”
“That was his answer?” Alex answered, flabbergasted.
“Well, he also pointed out that he’s dying. He doesn’t really care.”
“Amanda, this development is really going to throw a monkey wrench into the whole works. This might make the show unnecessary. Ian might have his heartstrings pulled by Keith because of the family connection and leave everything to him. What is Jeremy thinking about all of this?”
“Jeremy? He’s loving it. Now, in addition to bitching, treachery, greed, and hatred, he has incest and a huge target for the rest of the guys to aim at. Keith might as well just wear a T-shirt with a huge bull’s-eye on it.”
“From what you’ve told me, Amanda, when it comes to snide comments, their aim is pretty good.”
“It’s not the comments I’m worried about. They don’t leave a hole like a bullet can.”
CHAPTER 15
A Twisted Game of Twister
The next morning, we assembled in Ian’s living room to get ready for another day of shooting. As usual, we started at 6 A.M. since there was so much to set up, everyone had to be made up, and it was all done so that we could start shooting around 10:30 when the deep shadows of morning and evening weren’t around. Scenes had to be matched for lighting too. I never knew that even in small productions like Things Are a Bit Iffy, it took so much time to prepare what was supposed to end up looking so real and spontaneous. The entire cast was present, except for Keith, who, as usual, was the last to show up.
Apparently, no one got a lot of sleep last night. At around 2:30 A.M., one of Ian’s penis sculptures slipped off its base at the top of the stairs and went tumbling down the stairwell, taking several other penises with it in its tumble. The noise could’ve waked the dead, Aurora reported. Ian, David, Drake, and Marcus eventually came running downstairs over the commotion, but, of course, it was Ian who made the loudest noise over the incident. Ian actually wailed over the loss of his work of art since he claimed that it was a scale model of Jack Wrangler’s cock. Jack Wrangler was one of the most famous gay porn stars in the 1970s. Anyway, by the time the guys got Ian calmed down, got him to swallow an Ambien, and escorted him back to his bedroom, a good half-hour had passed and everyone eventually went back to sleep.
But now that it was morning, Jeremy was getting visibly upset that Keith hadn’t showed yet.
“David, could you be a dear and go fetch Keith? We need to start shooting ASAP!” he said. As soon as David padded upstairs, Jeremy continued, “Okay, to bring you all up to speed, the last time we had Keith reveal he was Ian’s son and Ian had incestuous sex with him at one time or another. We also had the sabotaging of Gilles’s clothing and David’s hair, the uncovering of Aleksei’s penile implants, blah, blah blah. Let’s keep those events in mind as we start today. We’ll want some reactions about the incest thing.”
A minute later, David came back down the stairs, flung himself back in the chair he had just vacated, and picked up the copy of Numéro magazine that he had been reading earlier without saying a word.
“Well . . . ?” Ian spoke up. “Is Keith coming down or are we going to have to start without him?”
“If I were you, I’d start without him. He’s dead,” David pronounced, flipping another page in his magazine.
“What do you mean dead?” Ian asked, scratching for an answer. “You mean, like dead to the world, like in a deep sleep?”
“No, like dead-dead. Like not living. Not breathing.”
“Are you sure?” Ian continued, not believing what his ears were hearing. The rest of the cast sat with their mouths stuck open, showing hundreds of blindingly white teeth. “How can you be so sure?”
“Well, Ian”—David put his magazine down with an annoying slam onto the coffee table—“he’s lying there on the floor like he’d been